


Remembrance

by BiJane



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 23:20:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13623612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BiJane/pseuds/BiJane
Summary: The TARDIS on the Doctor.Stitch it together. Weave a narrative from all the moments. That happened before that, which would have prevented that… It’s not simultaneous, not to them.





	Remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> I started getting Feelings, then this happened.  
> (Bonus points if you can spot references).

 

His hands on her console, his-

Was it him? There were others, she knew, so many others. The one who was made in her, the one splintered throughout time, the water, the woman from another history, the thief, even the ones before, though they were fainter in her mind. So many had flown her, but only one truly mattered.

No. Stop. Stitch it together. Weave a narrative from all the moments. _That_ happened before _that_ , which would have prevented _that_ … It’s not simultaneous, not to them.

His hands on her console. Calling her beautiful. Thinking to himself, thoughts achingly loud. His dreams were the same as hers, of freedom, of all the sights of the universe, of all the mysteries.

That was the first time he’d seen her. Start there.

He almost hadn’t chosen her, she knew that. He’d already flown in a TARDIS, a much more advanced model, and the bond between Time Lord and TARDIS was a strong one. He’d been thinking of that one at first, thinking of familiarity, no matter how captivated he’d been the first time he stepped inside her.

But someone had changed his mind, and he chose her. He stole her, and she stole him, and together they went flying. Her, him, and his granddaughter. Quite the family.

He’d almost taken her apart not long after that, reassembling her without a few key components. He didn’t want to be recalled to Gallifrey, he wanted it to be as hard as possible for them to find him again.

It had worked, for a time.

She’d never really been the same after that. Her chameleon circuit rattled around, before at long last he landed on Earth, and it gave a last effort and died. He hadn’t noticed.

He noticed so little in those early days. He still called her ‘ship,’ he barely noticed how much she was there for him, how much she did.

It wasn’t until later, the young one with a stick of celery, that he’d rested his hands on her console.

“I never thought. I don’t know how you put up with me all this time, the things I’ve asked of you, how little I thanked you. I owe you everything. All the things I’ve seen, all my friends and companions, I never would have found them if not for you. Your… unpredictability. I’d probably still be settled down in Shoreditch with Susan if not for you. Thank you. For-”

Go back. That was later.

Linearity was so confusing. Was this how he saw their journeys, one thing after another?

She longed to speak to him, to tell him it wasn’t like that. She didn’t live it that way. She was before and she was after, she was putting up with his unwitting disregard and lying beneath his caring caress all at once.

Since the first moment he’d stepped inside her, she’d seen all the possibilities, and she’d chosen him.

Worlds where he died, worlds where he’d lived. Worlds where she’d died.

No. Back. One thing after another.

She remembered his first regeneration, how scared he’d been. She’d tried to hold him, guide the energies, guide him.

He never would have admitted to how afraid he was. She longed to tell him who he became, the myriad paths of possibility, but she knew not to even if she could.

She could just be there, just help him along as he grew into his next self.

They’d seen such wonderful things.

When the Time Lords came, she’d run with him. She was as afraid as he, afraid they’d take her back, decommission her. Afraid he’d see another TARDIS, a better one, or be assigned one.

The past- No, the future, it wasn’t so clear. It never was, when Gallifrey was involved, they had ways of manipulating time.

But then they’d been caught. They’d been dragged back, all the way back to where it had begun. She’d had to wait for him, wait for them to try him and enact his sentence.

She’d considered running, then. It was one of those moments she could distinctly remember as being in the past; the future had been in flux, less than even possibilities ahead of her. Not even a TARDIS could read the future of Gallifrey. It was one of the old laws.

She could have fled. A TARDIS escaping Gallifrey of her own volition was, back then, unheard of. But she could, she knew she could.

She’d burn out half of her own circuitry, jettison most of her interior to get past the transduction barrier, but she could have escaped. She could have had that freedom again.

But what was freedom without someone to share it with?

She was already seeing wonders, she’d already seen everything, in the haze of potential that was as real to her as the present was to those linear beings. It just wasn’t the same, without her Time Lord.

So she’d waited for him, for whatever they’d do. She waited for him to be returned to her, and felt their punishment. They’d torn something from her, like ripping away a limb, and flung her down to Earth.

Exile.

She couldn’t fly. She tried as much as him, sometimes pushing herself too hard. She felt him rummage around inside her, and she didn’t care. If he could find something, anything, to restore their freedom…

She couldn’t see time. As well as paralysing her, they might as well have blinded her. All her usual awareness of possibilities was stripped away, that skill intimately connected with her ability to travel.

It was agonising.

She wanted to be of more comfort to him, looking back. Or looking forward, she wasn’t quite sure.

She just didn’t know how. Their kind of life was so strange to her, no matter how much she saw. Even if she had been able to speak she wouldn’t have known what to say, but she wanted to _try_.

When her core had been returned though… If she could, she’d have laughed with joy as she whirled through the vortex, as she saw all their futures together and all their pasts.

She saw in eighty tenses, all at once. The past, the present, the future, the _if_ s, ways of perception indescribable in any language outside Old High Gallifreyan, and a handful more besides.

It became murky. There were other lives he might have led, other forms he might have regenerated into, or other times he might have fallen. She carried them within herself, every Doctor, every way.

And then came the spiders. She remembered the spiders.

Was it the fourth, next?

It might be _his_ hands on her console. She sees him, walking through her.

He installs something into her, something meant to cloak their movements. It hurts, but he doesn’t understand yet. When he does – when he did? – he apologises endlessly.

There’s someone else there too, a Time Lady travelling with them. She doesn’t know how she feels about that. She doesn’t like Gallifreyans; she remembers what they did, what they will do, what they’re doing to her constantly.

She sees what she might become too, sees what war twists her into. It might be possibility, it might be reality, it might be past.

She knows who was next, she knows he began to understand. Really understand.

No. Losing track again. Focus.

TARDISes are sentient, after a fashion. It was one of those lessons taught to every Time Lord, but they never thought about it. They were restrained, yoked, controlled.

She burned with pity for all her sisters she encountered. They didn’t have the same freedom as her, they didn’t experience what she had, would have, did have, might have.

She remembers others. A timeline of possibility, an almost-event, a child of hers fights back. She takes a fierce, sad joy in that. It is a possibility of tragedy, abominable events, a war throughout time, but it is _something_. It makes the Time Lords rethink.

Some talk to her child, treat her as a person, not a ship.

She wishes she could talk to the Doctor of her. But no, not yet.

He would give her freedom. He takes some time away, leaving a Pharaoh and a girl on a world of wonders, and drifts with her through the Vortex.

He will tinker with careful ease. He will trust her; that she’ll see in his mind. Because he will trust her, and because he will be sorry, he’ll remove as many of the limitations imposed upon her as he can.

It was then she stopped being a ship, and became a companion.

It had taken so long, and yet it took no time at all.

Sometimes she’d fly herself, when he isn’t there. She’ll always come back, right where he left her. She doesn’t know if he’ll ever notice.

It isn’t the same, not without someone to experience it with, but it’s something that’s hers. He has adventures of his own, so too does she, but it isn’t the same if they’re not close.

She guides him through another regeneration, doing her utmost to comfort him. The constant death and rebirth is beginning to take a toll on him; it takes a short time for him to remember who he is. Or perhaps it takes years. She doesn’t understand these measurements.

His hands on her console. He’s there, but he doesn’t see what she sees. He doesn’t see the paradoxes averted, the _if_ s that never are. She does what she can to tell him, but it’s never clear.

But he understands that she does. He trusts her judgement, even if he doesn’t show it.

Perhaps _this_ is her present. She’s not sure.

He acts brash, pompous. Well, he does have centuries of experience, a certain degree of confidence is expected. She can see in his mind though, she sees how much softer he is.

She’s always been in there. In him, and his companions. She longs to bridge that gap, to assure them he isn’t the same as the façade he puts up.

In the eternal blink of an eye, that one too is gone. Or is this arrival? She might’ve lost track of her direction.

She liked the number seven. Seven. _Sev_ en. Sev _en_. It’s a nice number. She thinks of the numeral, in so many languages.

No. Distraction.

He can be cruel, most of all to himself. He asks his friends to give much up, and they do; and he does. He asked her to give up her-

Did that really happen? Gods and monsters, pain and loss. She’s losing track. It’s hard enough keeping track of linearity without sorting through the possibilities.

There’s only one line, one set of events all in a chain. Constant, coherent. A links to B, B links to ψ. No matter how much she sorts, it never seems to make sense.

She remembers the time they spent together. He lived that life like it was his last, turning the universe into a place he could leave, and retiring in her.

She changed her interior, from stark white console to home. Books, chairs, music. He spent hundreds of years, for once not running around the universe, but rather sitting back.

He read, listened to her songs, and listened to her hum. He learned to understand her, to talk to her as best they could.

“You know, I was starting to get lonely. Since Ace… I’d have travelled with anyone, just to fill the emptiness. But I don’t need to, do I? You’d think with all the planning I do I wouldn’t miss the blindingly obvious, but I still do. Hm. So what do you say, me and you? You know it strikes me, you’ve been my companion for the longest but we’ve never spent that much time together. Not just the two of us.”

She isn’t sad when he regenerates anew. He’s still there, still old, still new. Still as he was, even when that younger face runs around.

Fragments. There are cracks in reality before the War. It’s hard to sort out which are real, and which are possibility, or if there’s any point in distinguishing between the two.

She lives a million lives at once, a million billion trillion, as scared as she is exultant. She wants to tell him what’s to come, she wants to warn him-

But no, he deserves that innocence, that light in his eyes. She sees him grin, and she sees the light flicker out, but he has a _before_. She learns that.

She’s there throughout.

He’s different, one day. Karn, she remembers the name. Karn. He returned to her, a new face, a new mind. It takes her a moment to recognise him, even knowing who he is.

She usually guided his regenerations, helped him through it. She could have helped more, if he’d asked. There were Time Lords that had control over their forms, able to choose what they became.

He’d never wanted that. He relished the change, as much as it scared him. He couldn’t keep being the same, being what the same man would choose.

That was part of it, but there was also fear in part of his mind. He was scared of what he might become. If he chose to become a warrior, then he _would_ be. Every facet of him, every bit of matter down to the quantum level, every sliver of thought that made up his mind, would change for that one purpose.

He’d become something he’d never wanted to be, by doing something he’d never wanted to do.

She could see the pain that he tried to mask behind grim purpose. And she was with him still.

The War wasn’t clear to her, but she could still see more than him. She heard her sisters screaming out, telepathic cries that tore the cosmos. She hated the Daleks for killing them, and hated the Time Lords most of all.

The sisters she fought beside…. They weren’t true, weren’t real. Their growth had been hastened for war, forced, their minds suppressed. Angels become brutes. Children become beasts of war. It made her sick to see. It makes her sick. They still surround her.

He felt the same. Any other time it was an injustice they’d have fought against. Together.

But it was war. They both did things they never otherwise would have done. His regeneration was only the first.

She thinks that’s it, at least. There were still possibilities echoing around her.

After, she wants to be there for him, but he’s closed himself off. He knows she’s there, but he doesn’t want her to be. He _wants_ solitude.

She’s amazed that the human comes aboard. She feels the human stare into her heart the first time she touches her, sees him soften again.

No. Linear order.

He wants the loneliness. He wants to wallow; he doesn’t feel he deserves anything else.

She longs to tell him the truth. She longs for so many things. But the war is over, the future is clear again, as is the past. She remembers all her myriad selves encircling Gallifrey, saving Gallifrey.

She hates them, but she’s learned with him. They didn’t deserve death.

It’s a strange experience. She’s still doing it, still ending the War, and she always will be. She isn’t meeting herself, they’re all her. It’s just, for once, the various aspects of her body are in one place.

She doesn’t know if she’ll ever explain it to him, if she’ll ever get the chance. Which probably means she doesn’t, if she can’t even see the possibility.

Her body extends throughout time. Her a century ago is a limb, her now is an eye, if now even means anything.

She guides him through his regeneration. He lets her, falls gratefully back into her embrace.

It takes a while to reconnect, but she does so without a second thought. She embraces him, and at long last feels him _happy_ again, not just a façade. He lets her in his mind again.

“Oh, I’ve missed you.”

He’s still lonely. It confuses her still, his friends aren’t so far away. A small stretch away are his companions, his family, the Time Lords, even the Master getting along with him. They’re so close.

No. Not for him, she reminds herself. It isn’t like that.

She can’t put her feelings into words. There aren’t words. TARDISes don’t need language; with each other they have thoughts, with the Time Lords they rarely speak.

Love is such a mild term.

So too is jealousy. It misses so many complexities, it sounds harsh, but she feels it as intensely as anything. Those others inside her get what she barely gets; they _touch_ him, they talk to him. And he talks back.

She’s still in those early days, still in the time before he spoke to her, still when he just called her _ship_.

And she’s in that human body, plucked out of her matrix and thrust into it, allowed to-

No. Getting ahead again.

It’s easy to be confused. It’s easy to remember him ignoring her, forgetting her presence, and lavishing all his attention on them. Sometimes those instances rule her mind, and she burns with regret for what she will never have.

And sometimes all the good coexists. Sometimes she’s alone with him, and human with another him, all at once.

Sometimes she’s killing him-

No. Possibility, infection, other universes. Forget them. Not her.

Move on. Linear order.

He’s different when she’s human, but it’s like he’s all of them at once.

The child is made in her too, the one he loves. She sees how happy she makes him, and she can’t be jealous. Especially not when, _finally_ , she has someone to talk to.

It isn’t much, but she’s in their minds. She’s in all of them. But the child can hear her, just slightly. She can take hints, she can _feel_.

The War had interrupted her continuity. Before she could see right through it, see such different possibilities. When it occurred, she’d seen nothing. And now it was ended, she’d always been able to see this, despite never seeing it before.

She’d comforted herself, as she was disposed of before the Doctor had ever touched her (it was before, _that_ marker she was certain of), with the memory yet-to-come. The child.

“She loves you. Not more than me, and not less, not the same. I don’t think it could be anything other than different. But I think she wants me to tell you that.”

“I know.”

They spend more time together. She finds it sweet; he doesn’t need to, she’s still spending time with his seventh incarnation, but she appreciates it nonetheless.

He retires, and spends centuries with her.

And then comes Trenzalore.

She remembers his death, and guiding him one last time into forever. He becomes a scar, one she protects, one she locks herself tightly around. She’s still there, still truly alone.

There are stories of a TARDIS graveyard. When the Time Lord dies, the TARDIS flings themselves into the vortex, whirling through to the end of eternity where they fall in among the bodies of their sisters.

There to spend forever.

That time, she doesn’t. She stays with him, even if it’s just a scar. She knows what will happen.

And at the same time she flourishes in the other possibility. She travels with a new face, helps him still as best she can. And, in turn, he helps her.

He gives her the freedoms he’s always wanted, and she gives it to him.

He’s changed. She knows that. She knows who he is now, compared to what he once was. Even she can see it, though she sees them all at once.

It’s the process she doesn’t understand. Beginning and end are not the same, but there are so many middles, so easy to get jumbled up. She’ll hope stitching this into order will help her understand him.

And she’ll await the first time he walks into her still, await his hands on her console. Or her hands on her console, that’s clear too. Perhaps that’s the present.

She’ll never understand linearity.

Or perhaps it’s the TARDIS graveyard. Perhaps she lies there, after one of her Doctor’s myriad deaths, and remembers. Or is it remembering, if it’s yet to happen?

It doesn’t matter.

She wishes she could laugh, she wishes she could cry.

Their hands on her console, and eternity before them.


End file.
